Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I warmly welcome today's announcement by Eircom that it is enabling 100 more exchanges. However, that still leaves over 600 exchanges in rural Ireland with no chance of getting broadband. The Minister has referred to the wireless option, which we all know is very expensive.

Is the Department talking directly to the new owners of Eircom, the Babcock and Brown team of Mr. Rex Comb and Mr. Pierre Dannon, about how we might enable the whole country? Mr. Rex Comb said in an interview on 6 October in The Irish Times that he could not see how the company could commercially enable those outstanding rural and other exchanges that are in difficulty.

I commend the Minister on the fact that 9.6% of lines are now broadband enabled and that we now have 410,000 subscribers. However, Denmark has 29.3% of lines enabled, the Netherlands has 28.8%, Iceland has 27.3%, South Korea has 26.4% and so on. In a recent report on the OECD nations, we were passed out by the Czechs. It is only countries like Slovakia, Mexico and so on that are behind Ireland.

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